Platform Five – This week’s most talked about social media tool and platforms

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We’re back with another edition of Platform Five – our weekly look at the online platforms and tools that have been making headlines.

This week we’ve taken a look at PRFilter.com, Google One Pass, XYDO, Klout for Chrome and foursquare and HISTORY.

We also like the look of Zipcast from Slideshare.

Let’s tell you about each one and why they are worth keeping an eye on…

1. PRFilter.com aiming to be Google for press releases? PRFilter is a neat idea that aims to bring journalists closer to the content they are interested in. The latest evolution in the product announced this week involves the ability to search for press releases on the service by topic from the main hub. Read more about it at Reputation Online.
2. Google has a busy week, too – Google made news this week with the announcement of One Pass – a micropayment service that enables publishers to set the terms for access to their digital content. It then followed that up with news that Google Social Search had been improved. This means that social results like Twitter and Quora will appear in an integrated way of the page when you search for content. Both developments show Google’s intent on being a much more prominent player in the social / digital content space.
3. XYDO makes your global web news personal – this new service helps you identify what your networks rate as interesting content and news without having to pour through thousands of tweets or status updates. They call it a personalised news network which sums it up pretty well too. If you’d like to test XYDO in beta, we have some invitations.
4. Klout scores brought to Twitter via Google Chrome – Klout, the online influence scoring tool, gets a bit of grief from industry pundits because it doesn’t tell the whole story. We don’t think it has ever claimed to be a perfect gauge of influence but it can play a partial role. It was made more useful this week with the release of a Google Chrome Extension which integrates scores into your Twitter.com stream. Get the full story here.
5. HISTORY made by foursquare in London – This week also saw an encouraging announcement from the UK HISTORY Channel as they announced a tie-up with foursquare to bring more than 600 exclusive tips to sites across London. The move is a aimed at attracting younger audiences to HISTORY programming. Read more here.

This last one didn’t make the top five but is worth mentioning.

Zipcast is a new product from SlideShare which allows to to make video presentations direct from the page where your deck is housed. Really clever idea which is explained in full on the SlideShare blog.

If you’d like to take a look at our SlideShare presentations, go ahead, they’re all here.

Thats not all folks!

We love media insights at Paratus so here are a couple of bonus links to some stats and data that we found especially useful this week.

Bonus links:

1. The state of the Twittersphere, Feb 2011.
2. 15 interesting facts about social media use in the UK.

Catch you next week!

Paratus Communications is a London-based PR agency providing clients with creative and strategic talent to implement communications programmes on a local, national and international level.